Vyacheslav Veremiy

Vesti

February 19, 2014, in Kiev, Ukraine

Veremiy,
32, reporter for the Kiev-based daily newspaper Vesti, died at a Kiev hospital where he was treated for severe
blood loss after being shot in the chest the day before, his employer reported. According to
news reports, the journalist was assaulted by a group of armed and masked men
whom he had reportedly filmed from a car at an intersection in downtown Kiev.

Vesti said the
assailants stopped the taxi that Veremiy and Aleksei Lymarenko, his colleague at
the news outlet, were taking home from work late on February 18. The assailants
forced the journalists and the driver out of the vehicle and brutally attacked
them with baseball bats. They also shot Veremiy in the chest.

Vesti, which
carried out an independent probe into the attack, cited statements by the driver
and Lymarenko in its report that stated Veremiy was
targeted because he started filming the assailants from the taxi.

A
local news website TSN published a video of the attack on Veremiy, which had been recorded by the witnesses. The footage showed several
men beating Veremiy with baseball bats until he was able to escape and seek
help from the passers-by.

Vesti
reviewed
videos taken at the sceneand suggested that Vermiy was
killed by a group of pro-government protesters, who are known
locally as "titushki."

Kiev
police opened the probe into the killing.

Vesti reported
that Veremiy had been injured while
covering protests in Kiev in January. The journalist was wounded in his left
eye and left arm when a stun grenade exploded near him, the reports said.